Most media coverage of Zimbabwe unthinkingly repeats and reinforces a Western and neoliberal perception of the history and causes of that country’s political and economic crisis.
The dominant view is that “socialism” explains Zimbabwe’s economic collapse and political repression. The version perpetrated by Robert Mugabe, on the other hand, and uncritically reproduced by many pan-Africanists, is that he is waging a noble and just struggle against Britain and its proxies, white farmers and the MDC.
Both these analyses are simplistic, superficial and ahistorical.
Let us first consider political repression. This is not a new development — in fact, it has been a pattern in Mugabe’s rise to power and the evolution of Zanu-PF.
In the mid-1970s, before Mugabe went to Mozambique to join the struggle, a new political and military force arose — the Zimbabwe Peoples Army. Zipa, whose leaders identified themselves as socialists, had attempted to unite soldiers from both Zanu and the Zimbab-wean African People’s Union. Early in 1977, Mugabe persuaded Frelimo to arrest and imprison the Zipa leaders. Hundreds of their supporters in the camps were tortured and killed; the rest were warned that Zanu’s axe would descend on dissenters’ necks. In 1978, more “dissident” Zanu-PF cadres were tortured and imprisoned.
This history is not widely known. What is widely known is the notorious assault by Zanu-PF’s 5th Brigade on Zapu cadres and ordinary residents of Matabeleland from 1982 to 1987, which resulted in an estimated 20Â 000 deaths. But the British and American governments turned a blind eye to these events, supporting a fledgling government that remained in their sphere of influence — anti-Soviet and ambivalent in its support of the ANC.
The beginning of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is usually ascribed in the media to farm invasions ordered by Mugabe in February 2000, after losing a referendum on his attempt to revise the Constitution. This led to a sharp decline in (mainly) foreign exchange-earning export crops. (It is important to note that, since independence, Zimbabwe’s economy has remained capitalist.)
To blame the farm invasions for the economic crisis, however, is to ignore the consequences of the 1991-96 structural adjustment programme, which led to increased unemployment, social stresses, government corruption and a growing parasitic middle class.
While the economic and food crisis is usually attributed to the occupation of white commercial farms, the key role of Zimbabwe’s small-scale farmers is generally ignored. After 1980 the proportion of both total and marketed national maize output contributed by small-scale farmers rose from under 10% to over 60%. Since independence smallholders have produced most groundnuts and sorghum, and almost all vegetables sold in local markets. By 2000 smallholders were producing over 80% of the total cotton crop and most burley tobacco.
Meanwhile, large-scale commercial farmers, with increasing numbers being black, retained their dominant position in export-generating flue-cured tobacco, dairying and specialised crops, and switched from maize to intensive horticulture. Some ranchers moved into wildlife. These subsectors all demand high levels of capital investment.
Replacing white commercial farmers with the beneficiaries of “fast-track” land reform has not in itself been the main cause of declining food supplies since 2000. Declining agricultural output since 2000 is partly due to the effects of the economic crisis, together with factors such as drought and inadequate government support to land reform beneficiaries. Rising unemployment has hurt smallholder farmers, since wages from family members in town are used to purchase agricultural inputs.
This is not to deny that the “fast-track” has been violent, corrupt, destructive of farm infrastructure and poorly supported by government agricultural services. It has led to massive displacement of farm workers, causing untold hardship and contributing to joblessness. It has also resulted in falling export levels, resulting in an acute shortage of foreign exchange needed to purchase fuel and raw materials.
The current reporting on Zim-babwe is not only superficial but also misleading. It also limits any discourse about the lessons for South Africa’s evolution that Zim-babwe’s experience provides.
Most South African commentators suggest that, in light of their “analysis”, socialism has failed in Zimbabwe. On the contrary, it has never been tried.
David Sanders is director of the School of Public Health, and Ben Cousins is director of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, both at the University of the Western Cape. David Moore teaches politics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal